Monday, September 17, 2012

Frankenmuth: Michigan's Little Bavaria

Frankenmuth. I'm not really sure what to say about it. I guess we'll start with...it has a Glockenspiel! Kelli arranged a weekend trip for us over Labor Day to visit this little town. We didn't know much about it other than it had the world's largest Christmas store. I'm all about that. The kids and I went with Gigi and Boompa while dad stayed home and worked, poor guy!

There are two chicken restaurants in town that are owned by rival family members. I don't think they are that big of rivals because they have nearly the same menu. One great thing about Frankenmuth is that there are photo ops all over town like this one. They love to paint wood and cut holes for faces. Here Kent is a big chicken and Clark and Josh entertain us with the chicken dance.

One of the best things we did in Frankenmuth was attend a pretzel making class. My favorite part was the hairnet. I so miss wearing a hairnet. OK, that's a lie. But it was fun to learn how to create a pretzel. They told the cute story about the monks who gave pretzels to little kids who learned their prayers. We didn't get the baked pretzels until the next day. I think they would have been really yummy when they were fresh.

Fun in the drinking fountain. Kent just LOVED playing with Josh. And Josh just LOVES playing with Kent. He loves taking care of him. It's so cute.

Here are some shots of Bronner's the world's largest Christmas store. The store was huge. And if they didn't have an ornament you were looking for...well, they just had every single ornament. You couldn't NOT find what you were looking for unless your eyes were closed. Outside they had a lot of decorations and lights. Not quite like National Lampoon's, but It was pretty good. I mean doesn't everyone have a Statue of Liberty outside their house for Christmas?

The boys went to the Mirror Maze which was really cool. Clark didn't want to get too lost, but he still liked it. They had to wear plastic gloves so they wouldn't put fingerprints on the mirrors, and if they licked the mirrors, they had to clean them. Gross.

Why Clark, what big ears you have!

We also went to Grandpa Tiny's Farm which was a lot of fun. We went on their tour which included a wagon ride and lots of great jokes. Old men are so funny sometimes. They had a bee hive in the barn which was really gross. I hated it. Clark didn't mind getting close and listening to the buzz. Yuck. Clark thought the coolest part of the tour was the chicken coop. We saw the roost and where they went to lay their eggs. When we left the coop, Clark said, "Well that was really neat to see." Cracks me up because I have probably said that to him a million times at the zoo or wherever.